An audit sparked by the discovery of $54 million hidden in state parks department special funds has found problems with another stash of cash -- $3.9 million.

Parks officials have not kept track of the intended use for $3.9 million in donations and have not been crediting interest to all of the donation accounts for at least 15 years, the audit of the department has found.

Earlier this year, the head of the parks department resigned and several of her deputies were fired when it was discovered the department had hidden tens of millions of dollars from the state budget for years. Parks officials hid the funds even as 70 parks were threatened with closure due to budget cuts and donations flooded in to keep them open.

The scandal sparked several reviews of the department, the most recent of which was released Friday by the Department of Finance. It confirmed $53.9 million was hidden from the most recent state budget and that the practice stretched back to at least 1993. The parks headquarters review also found issues with how the department manages its budget, accounts and purchasing cards.

"Parks must improve accountability, transparency, and communication to restore trust with the public, their partners, and internally within the department," the audit's summary says. "To improve operations, parks must develop a corrective action plan to address the observations and recommendations noted in this report."

In response to the audit, parks officials agreed with nearly all of the recommendations made by the auditors, and is working to implement them. The parks department is now led by Anthony Jackson, a retired Marine Corps major general from Fallbrook.

According to the audit, parks officials could not provide documentation showing the purpose of $1 out of every $5 in the department's fund for gifts, bequests and donations. The donations with no documented purpose totaled $3.9 million, including $1.5 million in one account that had sat dormant earning interest since 2004.

Parks officials are supposed to receive a letter indicating the purpose of each donation, who it came from, what project it is assigned to and where the money should go if there is any left after the project has been completed. No letters could be found for three of seven recent donations auditors reviewed.

Auditors also found the department was only crediting interest to donations when a donor specifically asked for it. As a result, 86 percent of interest earned by the donated money was credited to the parks headquarters reserve account.

In its response to the audit, the department said it will work with the department of finance to fix the issues with donation accounts. It said would not be able to assign interest proportionally to each donation received.

"Due to staffing limitations, we do not have the staffing capacity to calculate and record interest to over 300 individual accounts," the response says. "The interest is allocated to the (headquarters) reserve account and is then distributed to various district offices as needs throughout the park system are identified. We will work with the Department of Finance to ensure that this is an appropriate methodology and that it is done accurately."

The audit also found the department was not using a consistent methodology in calculating budget documents each year, lacked clear policies and procedures for preparing budget documents, mis-classified $60,000 in rent income as a donation, and did not ensure department purchasing cards were used for appropriate purchases.

One question not answered by the audit was why the department hid money for nearly two decades, because it would not have been able to spend it without including it in the state budget. That question is expected to be answered as part of an ongoing Attorney General's Office investigation.

A prior audit sparked by the parks scandal reviewed all of the states special funds and found another $233 million under-reported to the state budget due to accounting errors. The money was not intentionally hidden, the state found, and department of finance officials said it likely would not have affected the governor's or legislators' budget decisions.